Do not give dalliance
Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood.
“And what do you intend to do with yourself?” asked Lady Cantourne when
she had poured out tea. “You surely do not intend to mope in that dismal
house in Russell Square?”
“No, I shall let it if I can.”
“Oh, you will have no difficulty in doing that. People live in Russell
Square again now, and try to make one believe that it is a fashionable
quarter. Your father stayed on there because the carpets fitted the
rooms, and on account of other ancestral conveniences. He did not
live there--he knew nothing of his immediate environments. He lived in
Phoenicia.”
“Then,” continued Guy Oscard, “I shall go abroad.”
“Ah! Will you have a second cup? Why will you go abroad?”
Guy Oscard paused for a moment. “I know an old hippopotamus in a certain
African river who has twice upset me. I want to go back and shoot him.”
“Don't go at once; that would be running away from it--not from the
hippopotamus--from the inquest. It does not matter being upset in an
African river; but you must not be upset in London by--an inquest.”
“I did not propose going at once,” replied Guy Oscard, with a peculiar
smile which Lady Cantourne thought she understood. “It will take me some
time to set my affairs in order--the will, and all that.”
Lady Cantourne waited with perfectly suppressed curiosity, and while
she was waiting Millicent Chyne came into the room. The girl was dressed
with her habitual perfect taste and success, and she came forward with
a smile of genuine pleasure, holding out a small hand neatly gloved in
Suede. Her ladyship was looking not at Millicent, but at Guy Oscard.
Millicent was glad that he had called, and said so. She did not add that
during the three months that had elapsed since Jack Meredith's sudden
departure she had gradually recognised the approaching ebb of a very
full tide of popularity. It was rather dull at times, when Jack's
letters arrived at intervals of two and sometimes of three weeks--when
her girl friends allowed her to see somewhat plainly that she was no
longer to be counted as one of themselves. An engagement sits as it were
on a young lady like a weak heart on a schoolboy, setting her apart in
work and play, debarring her from participation in that game of life
which is ever going forward where young folks do congregate.
Moreover, she liked Guy Oscard. He aroused her curiosity. There was
something in him--something which she vaguely suspected to be connected
with herself--which she wanted to drag out and examine. She possessed
more than the usual allowance of curiosity--which is saying a good deal;
for one may take it that the beginning of all things in the feminine
mind is curiosity. They want to know what is inside Love before they
love. Guy Oscard was a new specimen of the genus homo; and while
remaining perfectly faithful to Jack, Miss Millicent Chyne saw no reason
why she should not pass the time by studying him, merely, of course,
in a safe and innocent manner. She was one of those intelligent young
ladies who think deeply--about young men. And such thinking usually
takes the form of speculation as to how the various specimens selected
will act under specified circumstances. The circumstances need hardly
be mentioned. Young men are only interesting to young women in
circumstances strictly personal to and bearing upon themselves. In a
word, maidens of a speculative mind are always desirous of finding out
how different men will act when they are in love; and we all know
and cannot fail to applaud the assiduity with which they pursue their
studies.
“Ah!” said Miss Chyne, “it is very good of you to take pity upon two
lone females. I was afraid that you had gone off to the wilds of America
or somewhere in search of big game. Do you know, Mr. Oscard, you are
quite a celebrity? I heard you called the 'big-game man' the other day,
also the 'travelling fellow.'”
The specimen smiled happily under this delicate handling.
“It is not,” he said modestly, “a very lofty fame. Anybody could let off
a rifle.”
“I am afraid I could not,” replied Millicent, with a pretty little
shudder of horror, “if anything growled.”
“Mr. Oscard has just been telling me,” interposed Lady Cantourne
conversationally, “that he is thinking of going off to the wilds again.”
“Then it is very disappointing of him,” said Millicent, with a
little droop of the eyelids which went home. “It seems to be only the
uninteresting people who stay at home and live humdrum lives of enormous
duration.”
“He seems to think that his friends are going to cast him off because
his poor father died without the assistance of a medical man,” continued
the old lady meaningly.
“No--I never said that, Lady Cantourne.”
“But you implied it.”
Guy Oscard shook his head. “I hate being a notoriety,” he said. “I like
to pass through with the crowd. If I go away for a little while I shall
return a nonentity.”
At this moment another visitor was announced, and presently made his
appearance. He was an old gentleman of no personality whatever, who was
nevertheless welcomed effusively, because two people in the room had
a distinct use for him. Lady Cantourne was exceedingly gracious. She
remembered instantly that horticulture was among his somewhat antiquated
accomplishments, and she was immediately consumed with a desire to show
him the conservatory which she had had built outside the drawing-room
window. She took a genuine interest in this abode of flowers, and
watered the plants herself with much enthusiasm--when she remembered.
Added to a number of positive virtues the old gentleman possessed that
of abstaining from tea, which enabled the two horticulturists to repair
to the conservatory at once, leaving the young people alone at the other
end of the drawing-room.
Millicent smoothed her gloves with downcast eyes and that demure air by
which the talented fair imply the consciousness of being alone and out
of others' earshot with an interesting member of the stronger sex.
Guy sat and watched the Suede gloves with a certain sense of placid
enjoyment. Then suddenly he spoke, continuing his remarks where they had
been broken off by the advent of the useful old gentleman.
“You see,” he said, “it is only natural that a great many people should
give me the cold shoulder. My story was a little lame. There is no
reason why they should believe in me.”
“I believe in you,” she answered.
“Thank you.”
He looked at her in a strange way, as if he liked her terse creed, and
would fain have heard it a second time. Then suddenly he leant back with
his head against a corner of the piano. The fronds of a maidenhair fern
hanging in delicate profusion almost hid his face. He was essentially
muscular in his thoughts, and did not make the most of his dramatic
effects. The next remark was made by a pair of long legs ending off
with patent-leather boots which were not quite new. The rest of him was
invisible.
“It was a very unpleasant business,” he said, in a jerky, self-conscious
voice. “I didn't know that I was that sort of fellow. The temptation was
very great. I nearly gave in and let him do it. He was a stronger man
than I. You know--we did not get on well together. He always hoped
that I would turn out a literary sort of fellow, and I suppose he was
disappointed. I tried at one time, but I found it was no good. From
indifference it turned almost to hatred. He disliked me intensely, and I
am afraid I did not care for him very much.”
She nodded her head, and he went on. Perhaps he could see her through
the maidenhair fern. She was getting more and more interested in this
man. He obviously disliked talking of himself--a pleasant change which
aroused her curiosity. He was so unlike other men, and his life seemed
to be different from the lives of the men whom she had known--stronger,
more intense, and of greater variety of incident.
“Of course,” he went on, “his death was really of enormous advantage to
me. They say that I shall have two or three thousand a year, instead of
five hundred, paid quarterly at Cox's. He could not prevent it coming to
me. It was my mother's money. He would have done so if he could, for
we never disguised our antipathy for each other. Yet we lived together,
and--and I had the nursing of him.”
Millicent was listening gravely without interrupting--like a man. She
had the gift of adapting herself to her environments in a marked degree.
“And,” he added curtly, “no one knows how much I wanted that three
thousand a year.”
The girl moved uneasily, and glanced towards the conservatory.
“He was not an old man,” Guy Oscard went on. “He was only forty-nine. He
might have lived another thirty years.”
She nodded, understanding the significance of his tone.
“There,” he said, with an awkward laugh, “do you still believe in me?”
“Yes,” she answered, still looking away.
There was a little pause. They were both sitting forward in their chairs
looking towards the conservatory.
“It was not the money that tempted me,” said Guy very deliberately; “it
was you.”
She rose from her chair as if to join her aunt and the horticultural old
gentleman.
“You must not say that,” she said, in little more than a whisper, and
without looking round she went towards Lady Cantourne. Her eyes were
gleaming with a singular suppressed excitement, such as one sees in the
eyes of a man fresh from a mad run across country.
Guy Oscard rose also, and followed more deliberately. There was nothing
for him to do but to take his leave.
“But,” said Lady Cantourne graciously, “if you are determined to go away
you must at least come and say good-bye before you leave.”
“Thanks; I should like to do so, if I may.”
“We shall be deeply disappointed if you forget,” said Millicent, holding
out her hand, with a smile full of light-heartedness and innocent
girlish friendship.